


Old Management

by mexicanspeedwagon



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Post-DotO, billie lurk adopted a child from an age ago and sometimes that just happens, emily's a brat because she's 20 and not At Court, remember that time billie saw the dead god and immediately kinned bc i do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 00:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16587536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mexicanspeedwagon/pseuds/mexicanspeedwagon
Summary: The last words he heard Billie Lurk say were “Don’t worry.”Inability burned into his skin where her hands gripped his. How could he not? Billie Lurk was dead.The boy formerly known as the Outsider needs some help.





	Old Management

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesbianedgeworth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianedgeworth/gifts).



The last words he heard Billie Lurk say were “Don’t worry.”

Inability burned into his skin where her hands gripped his. How could he not? Billie Lurk was dead.

\--

He needed to get to the Empress, quickly, but mortality, as he was constantly reminded, has its drawbacks. The first and worst was the inability to  _ go,  _ bound as he is to the flesh and viscera, bones that are his and his own alone, surrounded only by the wet and purely unmarked.

(A lie. The thing he misses most is the  _ knowing _ , the whispers of the void that echo still within him are lost now, dead language indescribable to the living, and he doesn’t know-- they are not warm but once upon a time they  _ were  _ him, and he  _ was  _ the knowledge, for better or for far far worse this new old heart denies him--)

If he had known, she might not have died, Billie Lurk, and it was this the boy regretted. Fortune, however, smiled upon him as much as Blame saw fit to shit, and the Empress was not locked behind the walls of Dunwall tower. In fact, Emily Kaldwin was in Karnaca.

_ Misfortune is an identical twin _ , something he often heard and thought stupid. There were no cosmic scales-- if there were, he would have had to balance them at some point, and he would have waxed endlessly lyric about it… likely to Daud, who would have deserved it. Mortals are bound by different rule, such as laws about trespassing, also meaningless to him.

He discovered the presence of Emily Kaldwin in Karnaca by wandering into the looming shadow of the Lord Protector. This would have been far less intimidating if he had not been climbing through a ninth story window at the time.

“Oh, hell,” he said, quietly, before the blade sends him back to it. It was not what he imagined his last words to be, but his  _ last _ last words set that bar on the ground. He saw the reflection of green eyes in Piero’s invention, reminded suddenly they were his.  _ Oh, Hell  _ would do.  Unless, of course, it wouldn’t. The blade stayed, an inch (and a fraction he could no longer measure) from his face. Corvo Attano was not one to hesitate, and more assassins have fallen under his blade than escaped it. Corvo Attano was also a man who walked through a plague and come out with cleaner hands on the other side. Perhaps he, the boy trapped in an inch and a bit, was not special. 

Novel. The Lord Protector had always been interesting, except for, perhaps, now. He searched with his eyes for a solution to what was obviously a problem. Not knowing. The knowledge, or lack thereof, about this face. He’s incredibly expressive, and the attempt to place where he had seen him (the boy) was plainer and plainer by the second. He (the boy) grew tired of it quickly.

“Hello, Corvo.”

His voice might have cracked on it, but it still worked out. Corvo leapt backwards, free hand catching the boy by the collar and dragging him into what he now recognized to be one of the nicer hotels in the area. Hubris, as they say, is a bitch.

(Actually, nobody says that but him. The fact that  _ he  _ is no longer  _ they _ phased him still, he heard the whale song of the bones at Corvo’s chest as if it were the hundred yesterdays ago when yesterday meant nothing to him. They call. They call. What do  _ they _ think abou--)

Corvo snapped his fingers, and the boy looked to them-- Dunwall Sign. A breathing language still available.

[Why.]

An interesting question from an interesting man. Given the opportunity, the boy would very much wax poetic about the nature of  _ choices  _ and the occasional impossibility of  _ impossibility  _ and the pervasiveness of  _ humanity _ . The void, Billie Lurk had discovered quickly, was not what made him longwinded, but where to start…

It must have been plain on his face.

Corvo pinched the bridge of his nose, waving his other hand in… annoyance? Probably. This wasn’t the first time he’s gotten testy with a god, or one of those times at all. He would probably in fact never have the opportunity to sass the Emissary of the Dark (or whatever the Abbey had been calling him this century) ever again.  _ He  _ no longer exists-- just the boy, standing here, waiting nearly politely as Corvo’s hand turned in the air, looking for--

A rephrase. [How.]

A _useless_ rephrase. He realized this immediately. [Why are Y-O-U] sign drawn out, emphasized, _you!,_ not a person, [ _H-E-R-E_ ] in the mortal coil, at Corvo’s feet instead of the other way around, [ _N-O-W_ ] when there is no ominous, threatening coup, [ _LIKE--_ ] 

Corvo faltered, but  _ THIS  _ was implied as he pointed two fingers at his eyes.  _ Why are YOU here, now, like THIS? _

A series of interesting questions. The boy stood up, dusted off his pants, thought again of Billie Lurk. She would tell him to cut to the point and hand him a knife. Literally. It sat in his pocket, long flat blade folded neatly and completely unnecessary.

“I need... your help.”

Corvo’s hand twitched. The boy was barred from seeing the futures sprawling before him, but it didn’t take a god to know that he nearly said no immediately out of the gate. Bend.

“Actually, I need Emily’s help, but I presume this is a... package deal…?”

Eloquence escaped him far more often here. Mortality.

[No.]

The boy was not delighted to find that he had to look up at Corvo-- gone was the luxury of floating, conveniently placed perches made of suffering and shale. Equally distressed-looking was Corvo, looking down at him, but that was his fault for standing head and shoulders above the rest, always, always, always. 

Both of them knew why.

For however brief a time which does not exist, the boy was able to look less like himself. It was indeed relatively brief-- the void’s memory is long and absolute, and it remembered him well, the screaming face. Ages ago he was the Bleeding God, one fewer he was the Bloodied God, with nobody sure whether the stains on his hands were the remnants of his own life.  _ Why would the void bleed?  _ posed the Abbey, as if that was not the stupidest possible question. 

The blood, eventually, disappeared. Appearances changed, with difficulty. The Outsider managed it, subtly enough that the books simply forgot to call him a child.  _ Black-eyed bastard _ came in earnest, not pity, and certainly not whatever Corvo was looking at him with now. The truth remained: despite the centuries, the boy was and always had been fifteen. The boy  _ is  _ fifteen, but now he looked it.

Corvo made a short gesture, which probably meant something, but it escaped the boy. The whales understood, in rolling song that vexed him until Emily entered the room from the next over. “Yeah?” she asked from the door, peering back down the hallway first, a harmony rising from her pocket. A bone charm that was connected to another bone charm. Now  _ that  _ was interesting, a pair in the face of what are so often solitary--

Despite Corvo’s largeness (was he  _ always  _ so  _ big _ , by the Void,) when Emily turned, she and the boy locked eyes instantly. 

“What the fuck!” 

Indeed.

She rushed forward, almost-not-gently pushing her father out of the way, and Emily Kaldwin towered over him, too. Perhaps this would start to sting eventually, but he had known this one, at least, was coming-- in the sparseness of the void as Delilah had stripped it, the air of mystery was difficult to maintain. The height bit of his cobbled glamour, doubly so. Delilah made existence itself difficult.

Emily, unlike so many others, had always held his gaze. The first times they had met, she had been shorter than him, a child hiding underneath her mother’s desk between the Golden Cat vanities in the void. He spoke to her anyway, leaning on the Imperial teakwood, and supposed she listened, through the strings of fate wrapped around her head.  She was an interesting child, even in the Pits. Finding the rune emboldened her, and she had questions for him, the next time, chest puffed up, shoulders square. She stared him in the eyes.

_ Who did that to the whales?  _ she asked the Outsider. He laughed at her prideful ignorance, but he told her what the songs meant.

_ Who did that to my mom? _ she asked the Outsider. He knew, of course, by the marks on their second hands, who thrust the blade in and who simply greased the wheels. He told her the first but not the last.

_ Who did that to you?  _ she asked the Bleeding God. He liked that one far less, and said nothing. When Emily reached out to him, he disappeared.

Perhaps he should not have left her alone. They did not see each other again. He did not swear to return, back then, and she didn’t want him to, but they both knew it would happen. What a difference fifteen years makes.

The boy startled when she touched his face, dragged it very close to her own. It’s precious little he hadn’t done before, to the Marked, and he did his best to stare back into her dark eyes. Was this what that felt like, the whole time? Probably not.

“Uh--” said the boy, unable to do much else. What a difference two months makes. Back then, she had the power to refuse him. The Empress afforded him no such luxury. She tilted his head, slightly left, slightly right, a bit up. Staring.

“You asshole,” she said, laughing at him, of all the things to do, “I had nightmares about THIS face?”

The fact that Emily Kaldwin still recognized  _ THIS face  _ as The Outsider’s made the boy feel something he couldn’t get a grasp on. “I need help,” he said, intending to say something else, but.

“We have a shrine. I know it’s kind of shitty, but you didn’t have to--”

Corvo’s hand lands on Emily’s wrist, freeing the boy and catching their attention.

[He’s here.]

Emily rolled her eyes. “Yeah, dad, I see him.”

[No, you don’t.] Corvo turned a bit, and skipping the  _ how  _ and the  _ why,  _ for now useless pointless questions, he pointed at a couch. The boy sat before he realized he was doing it, surprised moreso by Emily doing the same. She didn’t make a face until she noticed him looking at her. Would she have stuck her tongue out at a god?

(The time she did when she was ten did not count.)

[What do you need?]

Billie Lurk. “… A favor.”

“Oh?” Emily’s eyebrows shot up, “And what can a mere  _ empress  _ do--"

Corvo made the short gesture again. The whalesong crested disapprovingly.

“Fine.” Emily sat back in the couch, one leg over the other at the knee, dragging her hand through the air in a gesture that could only mean  _ continue. _

“I wasn’t aware I was petitioning the  _ child  _ empress.”

The words slipped out, another hellish trapping of mortality, but hell if the boy wasn’t going to stand by them, tilting his head  _ just  _ so. She was going to punch him in the teeth, so he smiled, just to make it a little easier, like he would have back then. He’s learned since that the word is ‘smarmy’, and he decided in the moment to own it forever.

Emily Kaldwin I glared at him. Delightful. She could order his head removed and served medium rare. She would not, given her track record, but every journey begins with a single execution.

Well, the ones worth watching.

A sharp heel on the hardwood brought them both to attention. Corvo Attano.  _ Crow ; Your Father,  _ half-true, but the way his eyes cut through the boy would perhaps confuse a bystander as to  _ which half. _ Fortunately, everybody present knew where they stood.

The boy took his cue. “I need,” he said, fishing something out of his pocket, “a favor.”

The bone charm in his hand did not hum. The room around it froze.

[What is it?]

An unclear question. “It’s. Uh.”  _ Probably my rib _ is a bad way to answer, “Important.”

“Oh?” Emily, apparently recovered from being chastised, leaned forward, “For what?”

“It’ll let someone go to the... Void.”

Untested, naturally, but of this, he was certain. Many aspects of his current situation could be summarized as such.

“And why in blue blazes would  _ you _ ,” Y-O-U, drawn out, “need something like that?”

“I... Don’t?” The boy blinked at his faded voice. The prospect of setting foot in the void again… “I don’t think I can.”

[So you’re here.]

Corvo had gotten closer at some point, which bothered him. Corvo Attano, mortal man, probably walked straight at him and he didn’t notice. How much time had the boy practiced teleporting around a target, for what?

“Yeah.”

Emily reached a hand out to him, expectantly. “That’s not a favor.”

She wanted the bone charm, and the fact that she didn’t know it was human-god-human again resources wouldn’t hurt her, yet. He allowed her to pluck it from his open palm. “... Someone needs help,” the boy could see Corvo getting ready to prompt him again, get a  _ grip,  _ “Bil--"

_ NOT THAT GRIP _

“ _ \-- _ Meagan Foster.”

He struggled but managed to hold Corvo’s questioning gaze. The boy did not appreciate the boon of black eyes while he had them; back then, he did not have to lie. Not that this  _ was  _ a lie. His current position simply did not afford him to directly pose the moral quandary of  _ saving the woman who killed the one you held dearest _ \-- at least, not twice at once.

Empress Kaldwin made a strangled noise, the leather of her gloves almost squeaking as she clenched her hands. “And what does Miss Foster want.”

The boy did not turn, in near defiance. Corvo, too, did not look to his daughter, focused entirely on the words before him.

“She  _ needs  _ help.”

A sentence which was hopefully true. If mercy exists in the sea of antipathy (it does not, he would have seen it, the  _ whales _ ) it was true.

[Where?]

“The Void.”

It made his throat dry. The void, he wanted to say. The Void, he’s said twice now, dragged from his scrawny throat.

[Why?]

No longer a useless question. Not necessarily a question about Billie Lurk.

His answer would most likely have been cryptic-- out of necessity, moreso, than pleasure. The fact that the boy knew fuckall was hastily swept under the rug as it was, if he doesn’t pretend, then what does he have--

Instead, he screamed, until he didn’t.

\---

_ [What the hell did you do!?] _

_ The boy fell backwards, into the cushions, which did not stop his writhing in the slightest. Corvo rounded upon his daughter, three long steps, to see in her hands-- _

_ “He said he didn’t need it!” _

_ Her voice went high with the panic. The pieces of bone glistened in her hands, slick with the black spray of the fucking Void whales. The boy stopped screaming, suddenly far too quiet, and Emily’s wide eyes bounced between her father and his silent form. _

_ “What?” _

_ Emily. Emily Emily Emily. [Do you understand what’s going on here?] _

_ She set the pieces down neatly, in a line. “We got paid a visit by the Outsider.” _

_ Corvo pinched the bridge of his nose. There’s the disconnect.  _ _ [You think this skinny kid is THE OUTSIDER?] _

_ He dragged it out, the formal phrase over the onehanded slang. The Outsider, a God with a capital G, pointedly flourished. Emily swung her hand at him-- god, little g, ending in a point at the extra body in the room. _

_ “I know he is. I met him.” _

_ [And did he look like that?] _

_ She pushed the bones around, turning away to dig for a box among their things. Raw Whalebone. She wasn’t looking at him but he knew she knows he’s waiting.  _

_ “... Mostly.” Her rigid shoulders told Corvo that she was almost there. The bones murmured among themselves as Emily stared at them, the four silent stones in their rank. “That wasn’t whale, was it.” _

_ [He’s alive.] _

_ “Fuck me,” Emily slammed her hands down, animating again the things upon it as they leapt away from her strike, “Hell!” _

_ Corvo turned around again, crossing the room. The boy was unnaturally still, but the boy was unnatural. He breathed nonetheless. _

_ [You didn’t break him,] he tosses behind him, [so that’s great.] _

_ Emily didn’t respond. The boy twitched. Disaster cast a shadow suddenly over his shoulder, but there was nothing he could do. Emily Drexa Kaldwin had already decided to help. _

_ \-- _

The boy awoke later. Consensual sleep (insofar as mortal men can  _ consent  _ to sleep) bothered him enough, but blacking out? He is even less a fan. Perhaps the nonlethal option he had found so fascinating for so long was its own hell, bodies still strewn in a wake--

“God. Finally.”

Not quite. 

“Hey, I heard you. Get up, come on.”

Is he technically a citizen. Is that a binding order. Either way, he feet the long grip of Far Reach on his ribs. In an uncomfortable thrum of Void, Emily Kaldwin rose him from the couch. He ended up sorrier about that than he had expected to, the cushions are far more comfortable than he gave them hundreds of years of credit of being. The boy cracked open one eye. “You called?”

“Do you want our help or not.” Considering his head was still swimming just a bit, the boy was forced to weigh the chances of the Empress helping him directly into the grave for good. She can read this on him, a mile away. “I’ve--"

_ defenestrated people with this. _ Kirin Jindosh, abiding. “I know, I know. Can you finish assaulting me, please?”

A shift of her face meant it could have been worse, but it passed uneasily. She set him down, far more gently than he was expecting to deserve-- of course, then the boy noticed Corvo, looming suddenly. Is this what Blinking looks like from the outside? 

[Apologize.]

Emily had started turning when she first caught the whiff of magic, already on her lips, “Dad--”

Corvo raised an eyebrow, lifted his hand again to the tune of an unhappy song. That’s not exactly something. It bothers the boy, in present tense. Ignorant of this, Emily turned to facing him fully again. “I’m sorry I threw you into a very short coma in the pursuit of knowledge.”

The boy shrugged. Corvo was less satisfied, nudging her. This was how several things were done, in the royal house Kaldwin-- it’s a wonder of reputation alone that the shadow of The Crown Killer hadn't been seen earlier, over desks and shoulders and the High Overseers’ lunch table, the man himself greased so the boxes would sing louder at the grand palace dances. The boy had watched those, for however fleetingly interesting it all was. The music gave him a headache worse than Waverly Boyle’s, or now.

“And…” Emily hesitated, gaze locked on him, “that it apparently hurt a lot.”

“Right in my ancient assassination scar.”

“What?”

He’d caught her off guard, not exactly in the way he was intending to. The mortal coil is full of needless explanation, and this was exactly one of those times where the Outsider would have hung up on whichever devoted had even an inkling of a question. Unfortunate, too, that social contention binds his ghost to responding.

“Nothing.” is what he’s forced to say instead, grasping for another conversation thread. “What does that mean?”

Corvo, the addressed, blinked. [What mean?]

It threw him off, too, which made it convenient enough. Misdirection comes to him easily, still. “That little gesture. What is it?”

The boy watched carefully as Corvo made it again. Emily glanced to her father and laughed as the whales again crested, a curling question in and of itself. “It’s me-- Emily.”

“Oh.”

It looked an awful lot like something else. A little like [love], a lot like… hm. A long time ago, when he would have known what it was, he hadn’t had to think about it. He’d known what [Emily] looked like, without knowing what it  _ looked like _ . Acute loss haunted him in the rib that did not ache. He must have been making a face. Corvo, again, exuded pity, whatever that  _ means _ , the gesture of pity at all.

Well. In this case, the boy supposed it meant moving on.

[What do we have to do?]

“We?” The boy tapped at his chest. There was only one bone charm made, when he got here, but Emily Kaldwin might have done a lot of things for the pursuit of knowledge.

“We. You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy?”

He’s delivered that line a thousand times before. “I considered it.”

“Foolish.”

She said it with a smile, of course she had found a way to make it a family affair-- by apparent way of four charms, strung up in her hand. He was presented, neatly, with exactly a quarter of unspecified bone and a little bit more of a wrenched heart, oh. “You broke it.”

She broke it. The pursuit of knowledge. Is that what they call it these days, desecration of corpses? Is it still desecrating a corpse if he is alive, now, alive? The plague had begged the questions alive and breathing heavily in his hand, warbling, only partly dead.

Emily was slightly cowed by his flatness, creased brow. “They should still work.”

“The first one,” He couldn't keep the crack out of his voice, but it served to mock her, “ _ should _ have worked.”

“Yeah, but now it’s a team mission.”

That one pulled him back down, from the edge of human panic to the solid ground of universal annoyance. As if anyone here actually knows how to operate on a  _ team _ . The boy caught Corvo’s guilty eye, thinking the exact same thing, and he reveled in the knowledge he could still, very conditionally, stare the old man down. Old. Is Corvo old, now? Time is--

[Are you okay? You’re staring.]

And the old man stared back. “I’m fine.”

“Then, let’s go.”

She said, as if they were going to the corner. Perhaps she imagined it so. She had never traveled there without a guide holding her spiritual hand. Hubris is and will be a loud killer and it startled all of him, the quarterbone charm fell out of the boy's hand. “What, don't you need to get ready, or s---something?”

[Karnaca.] “Karnaca.”

They really were parent and child, fixing him with the same look. Of course they were armed to the teeth. Of course they were armed to the filling in  _ Karnaca.  _ Hell! He should have smote them when he had the chance if not the reason, but he should have done a lot of things that weren't his style back then. In fairness, he was usually the one who slammed the doors of opportunity, and not the other way around.

Billie Lurk. Even so.  “You don’t seem enthused,” Emily said idly, swinging her arm in such a way that clacked the other two bone charms together on their strings. He flinched at the phantom echo it sent through him.

“Pardon me...”

“ _ You're _ the one who's asking  _ our _ help, you little--”

[Emily.]

She froze. The boy watched himself breathe, to make sure the whole thing-- the whole universe-- wasn't a little bit bending. Corvo never had been one for conventionally solving problems, and the strange ability to stop time itself is a fascinating shape for a soul to have. Then again, the Outsider too had seen the single moment he could not prevent, over and over, and, then again. Maybe it wasn't  _ that _ odd. It was simple parental authority that stayed Emily's pointer finger, suspended in the air before the boy’s face.

[You don't want to go.]

Corvo wasn't asking. “No.”

[Why not?]

He asked in a stupid way. Not  _ why  _ but  _ how  _ and not  _ not _ but  _ come.  _ The boy refused to be deigned to-- what kind of hands would ask the Outsider [ _ how come _ ]? What kind of question is that? Terrible. The boy read into it. Why not, he was asked, his sanity preserved except for the expansive, trauma-ridden answer Emily, at least, waited for expectantly. Her father moved, instead.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked Corvo, who crossed the room to the balcony in-stead, looked down and out. The boy, Emily, and Corvo himself must be equally aware that this room views the beautiful distant beach, but directly overlooks a closed, difficult to navigate alley. Unscalable by regular people, which might have been inconvenient if any of them were actually normal.

“Dad.”

Not that getting in that window was  _ easy _ , for the boy. His connection to the Void was pinched into foresight inconvenient and--

“ _ Dad. _ ”

The Empress grew impatient and strode to her father's side, as she always had. This did not work out for her well, as he plucked the bonecharms off of her wrist and immediately cast the lot-- three dead singers-- to the ground far below.

[Nobody has to go.]

“Dad,  _ what the hell? _ ”

“She can just make more.”

He hadn't meant to say that, much less so hollowly, so frankly pitifully, but it certainly happened that way.

[She won't.] Corvo paused, raising an eyebrow to his daughter, [You don't have to.]

“We're on a new adventure! Like hell I don't!”

To the boy: [.... did something bad--]

Emily loosely pushed his explanation down. “Do not. Don't explain it.”

[-- taxes, about the taxes, Wine….--]

“Who?” The boy'd missed a name, again, to the father's heavy bemusement.

[Emily's,] Corvo turned the air for a moment, [friend.]

_ Emily _ , again, but the pause was as good as anything else. “ _ ‘Friend _ ?’”

“Dad, stop!”

[But Emmmilyyyyyy…]

He was smiling openly now, at least as hard as his daughter blushed.  _ Emily _ .  _ Emily  _ drawn out until it clicked.  _ Love  _ into…  _ rat.  _ Perhaps Corvo and Billie would have something in common, except for the fact that Corvo--

“What's wrong now.”

She’d seen him, so. No skirting it, no point, not even a question, but not for the Lady Kaldwin. “Don't you  _ eat  _ rats.”

It was Emily's turn on conversational high as the bark of laughter escaped her. “Oh no, he  _ totally  _ does! It’s gross!”

[Why?]

It was halting, in need of an eon's practice, but the boy did it, [ _ love - rat _ ], [Emily].

It sent her into a stitch, wheezing doubled over, a sudden attack of the diaphragm disabling whatever she would have said. She leaned on Corvo in all his frowning height, correction up, [I do NOT eat M-I-C-E.]

“Mouse…… mouse….. oh my god,” Emily can't straighten, though the boy can tell she's trying, “That's  _ mouse _ …. eating rats…. oh god….”

She dissolves into laughter again, drawing smiles from the boy and the man, picturesque in a perfect ending if they hadn't forgotten something incredibly important, Emily and the boy.

“What's funny?”

Corvo did not start at the voice, but he was the only one. Emily snapped to sobriety, heels clicked together and parted as easily as a blade would snap open, if the boy's genuine, absolute grin hadn’t beaten it. He whirled to see her, Billie Lurk, standing in the room.

She regarded him carefully, as one might a cat. “What, did you miss me that much?”

The boy met her halfway, in much the same way Emily Kaldwin had never bothered with “cool”. She opened her arms to meet him, but it took a beat longer for the reality to catch up with him.

“Arm,” he said, face pressed against a bone charm once again singular, whole, “Eye?”

It was lost upon the others, Corvo moreso than Emily, and for the boy’s rudeness Billie quirked an eyebrow at him. “That's rude, you know.”

“Uh….” Emily had no qualms about interrupting the moment, “Can somebody explain.”

Billie let the boy go. He could see it in her, the raw desire to exaggerate a bow, to joke, but the eyes of the Kaldwins-- two of them,  _ her  _ husband and  _ her  _ daughter-- cowed Billie into a cool rock back onto her heels. She always had her reverences, when she thought them due. However.

“Business trip,” said the smile playing on her lips, “Apologies.”

[You forgot someone.]

Billie blinked, her two whole eyes. How odd, but Emily’s  _ “yeah what the hell”  _ didn't clarify. The boy is the interpreter, often, since Daud took his whiff of language with him beyond the pale, but the expectation upon him put a stopper on the will. He was suddenly and intensely self conscious. “He said you forgot… something.”

Corvo's eyebrows drew in. Inaccurate. [Actually,]

Billie turned uncomprehending gaze upon Corvo again-- The Outsider would be able to hear Daud, younger,  _ look at me when I'm talking to you, Lurk _ \-- but as easily as breathing the Lord Protector realizes pointless venture. He points, full on, at the boy. Some _ one _ , inarguably.

“I told him not to worry.”

“Is that it?” Emily covered her face with her hands. “Those are  _ dying _ words.”

“No. If my last words aren't ‘avenge me’, I'm coming back.”

The boy laughed. How couldn’t he, at the truth, but Billie Lurk smelled like death and something else entirely. He waited, with the Kaldwins.

“They’re back,” was how she started, “the dead gods.”

Little d, little g, [dead gods?] Corvo stood in such a way that the untranslatable is overstated,  obvious, at least assumable, [or, Dead Gods?]

“Well. They aren’t dead, I suppose. Not exactly.”

The smile dropped off of the boy, dead. “The Old Gods.”

“Yeah, them! Exactly.”

The boy didn’t know much about who came before him-- he hadn’t thought their red eyes important, what need does an Outsider have to feel small? They killed him, these dead red eyes, of the people who held the knife, and they killed the boy dead. He didn’t care about the carcasses. Perhaps he should not have turned his back so easily upon bodies so fresh-- what is, after all, an eon in the void? Two?

The boy no longer knows. But it must be a long time.

“They’ve asked me one last favor,” Billie Lurk, the most important woman in the world, then now forever and always, trained her solid eyes on the Kaldwins and not the boy. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Corvo lifted his hands.

“He says,” Emily said, in the low intonation lost to time and Coldridge, “That we don’t have a particular choice.”

“Oh, they don’t need  _ you _ .”

The boy gulped. The Void, empty of him, loomed. The Void, full of something else, looms, and if they hadn’t been dead when he got there the boy would have killed them, too. Billie Lurk coughed, or so it might have appeared to people who did not have the experience of watching her laugh at Daud for years, as he once-in-a-while fell flat on his ass.

(Cursing the black-eyed bastard the entire way down, mind, and the boy might have been both of those things but he hadn’t ever pushed him. Intervening in human affairs? Below him, obviously, but the Marked entered the Void always and the boy is the--)

Billie interrupted him by knocking into him with her hip. “Did you hear me?”

No.

“I said that I have one last... thing. To drop off.” It’s a grand joke, apparently, by the way she quirked her eyebrow, “I’ll be right back, wait here.”

Emily scoffed, as many things are beneath her. “Here? Do I look like a babysitter?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“Actually, you look like a  _ baby. _ ”

Corvo wheezed, in his silenced cackle, and the boy knows it’s true. Also cruelly true is that out of several entire human ages the boy has only managed to keep fourteen human living years, and despite the fact that the empress is a child he is not allowed to partake in the joke. 

Old people only.

He, the boy, was disqualified on old. Billie smiled, but her employers, now, disqualified on people. They took from her time-- the Outsider wouldn’t have been able to fix that and did not, not even in his death throes. Her hand, her eye, Old Gods know what else, in their haunt. If she is haunted, the boy would be haunted again.

Corvo did the thing again, moving when the boy was wrapped up in himself. [We’ll take care of him.]

Better, he dared to suppose, than doing the haunting. It remained to be seen.

A knock at the door of the suite-- who would have thought, that hotels have check-ins, and doors-- startled them all into motion.

“Emily,” came the call, “Emily, let me in! I’ve lost my key an--and my wallet and everything else, and I mean  _ everything  _ else, Emily, come on!”

The boy knew that voice, once, when he knew everything, but he could only nag the gap in his memory. Billie had less of this problem and more of the rigid agitation, the fight before the flight.

[.... here.]

Corvo gloated to his daughter. A joke. Emily’s  _ friend. _

“Wyman?” she strode to the doorway with no hesitation, “Are you hurt?”

“No, but--”

But Emily did not open the door. “Or are you still the Morley Wine-man?”

Wyman, Wineman, clever. There’s an alcohol tax in Morley, now fresh from the Imperial Desks, and resoundingly bad according to the newspapers all the way in Karnaka. 

“Let me in, babe.”

Emily Kaldwin’s favorite wines are knowledge the boy does not need, but the public certainly has-- if some mysterious, unconnected stranger ruined the vintages, then who’s to say? Emily Kaldwin herself, certainly, leaning into the door as if to intimidate it. “My dad is here."

The voice at the other end audibly tapped a foot it probably possessed. “Mister Lord Protector Sir, please let me in, I’ve been mugged.”

Corvo flitted across the room, visibly. His worry was clear in the way he moved Emily’s hand off the knob, or tried-- “Dad, I think they’re faking it, remember Fraeport, and the ‘ _ carriage accident _ ?’”

Billie nudged the boy, subtly, the one-two tap of  _ we’re leaving _ and the three tap of  _ NOW.  _

“I’m still sorry about that, but the mud was unpresentable!”

“Can it, Wyineman, I’m busy.”

_ Where? _

“Dad, move!”

The window hung open, as it would. Nobody closed it. This nearly strikes the boy as funny but he swallowed it as Billie leaned in. “Wait at the docks.”

In that, he understood two things.

They edged towards the window because Billie Lurk had mugged a Morley noble. Of course, she would, and obviously, she had, as the door finally creaked open and the first word out of their mouth was “YOU!”

“Mark, let’s go!”

And, as room was swallowed by the sill, the boy and the woman parted ways, but she’d be back.

**Author's Note:**

> billie mugged wyman SPECIFICALLY for their weed SPECIFICALLY for the old gods. this is the kind of reputation you have, wyman. the void itself knows you have the good stuff. are you happy, wyman.
> 
> i lov brittany @lesbiangiogio tumblr i hate myself @ spherekuriboh tumblr


End file.
